Baby Got Vax

It got real today. We talked to the pediatrician about vaccinations for international travel and quickly learned that the clock is ticking. First, we learned that we have to go to specialized “Traveler Centers” to meet with a doctor and create individual immunization plans. Each appointment alone costs $115 just to learn what vaccines to get. Secondly, we learned that some vaccines, like Hep A, have boosters that are taken 6 months apart. We plan to leave the first week of August. Less that 6 months away from today. Hmmm. The tougher part is that the doctor needs your itinerary and length of stay before coming up with the individual plans. Yeah, about that minor detail…

Nurse: “so where are you going?”

Me: “umm..to a lot of places.”

Nurse: “cool…where?”

Me: “well, you see, we just decided to do this and have really not planned anything yet.”

Nurse: “well, we can’t make an appointment until you tell me where you are going.”

Me: “I don’t think we are going to Africa or Antarctica this trip.”

Nurse: “I need to know where you ARE going”

Me: “Ok, hold on a sec…”

I walk over to the gigantic laminated map we now have in our living room and start listing countries.

Ireland

England

Scotland

Portugal

Spain

France

Italy

Netherlands

Germany

Czech Republic

Poland

Estonia

Romania

Hungry

Slovenia

Croatia

Greece

Albania

Me: breath

Nurse: “wow, sounds like quite a trip”

Me: “ha, yeah…is it?”

Me to myself: Crap, I forgot Asia and Australia. Do we really have time to go to this many places?

Thailand

Vietnam

Laos

Cambodia

Malaysia

Indonesia

South Korea

China

Japan

Australia

New Zealand

Fiji

Nurse: “sounds fun, let’s get you on the calendar”

Me: “cool.”

Going through this process made us realize that we have no idea HOW we want to travel. Do we want to go slow and have deep experiences or do we want to move fast and have wide experiences? This initial convo with the nurse seems to be the latter. Can we do a combination? At first you think you can cover so much ground in a year but then you realize 52 weeks divided by that many countries will actually go by pretty fast. Going deep vs. wide won’t rack up the passport stamps but I think it might lend itself to a more family-friendly and memory building approach.